A huge outburst in a star shows what could happen to Earth

Astronomers studying a star system tens of light-years from Earth have observed, for the first time, how a star, called EK Draconis, expelled a huge burst of energy and charged particles far more powerful than anything scientists have ever seen. seen in our own solar system, as published in the journal ‘Nature Astronomy’.

The study explores a so-called stellar phenomenon, sometimes known as a solar storm. Astrophysicist Yuta Notsu, from the University of Colorado Boulder, in the United States, explains that the Sun emits these types of eruptions regularly, formed by clouds of extremely hot particles, or plasma, that can travel through space at speeds of millions of kilometers per hour.

And, they note, it’s potentially bad news: If a coronal mass ejection hits Earth squarely, it could supply entire cities.

“Coronal mass ejections can have a serious impact on Earth and human society”, warns Notsu, a research associate at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of California at Boulder and the US National Solar Observatory.

The new study, led by Kosuke Namekata, of Japan’s National Astronomical Observatory and a visiting former fellow at the University of California at Boulder, also

In that research, Namekata, Nostu, and their colleagues used telescopes on the ground and in space to observe EK Draconis, which appears to be a young version of the Sun. In April 2020, the team observed that EK Draconis expelled a cloud of searing plasma with a mass of quadrillion kilograms, more than 10 times greater than the most powerful coronal mass ejection ever recorded from a sun-like star.

The event can serve as a warning of how dangerous the weather in space can be. “This type of mass ejection so large -apunta Notsu-. This observation can help us better understand how similar events may have affected Earth and even Mars for billions of years. “

Notsu explains that coronal mass ejections usually occur just after a star releases a flare, that is, a sudden, bright burst of radiation that can spread far out into space.

However, recent research has suggested that on the Sun, this sequence of events may be relatively smooth, at least as far as scientists have observed. In 2019, for example, Notsu and his colleagues published a study showing that young Sun-like stars around the galaxy appear to experience frequent superflowers, like our own solar flares, but tens or even hundreds of times more powerful.

In theory, but not very often, perhaps once every several thousand years. However, this piqued the curiosity of Notsu’s team as to whether a super flare could also cause a super coronal mass ejection.

“Super flares are much larger than what we see in the Sun –explica Notsu-. So we suspect that they would also produce much larger mass ejections. But until recently, that was just a guess. “

To find out, the researchers set their eyes on EK Draconis. The curious star, Notsu points out, is about the same size as our Sun, but, at only 100 million years old, it is a relative young in a cosmic sense. “It is how our Sun looked 4.5 billion years ago”, Add.

The researchers observed the star for 32 nights in the winter and spring of 2020, using NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) satellite and the University of Kyoto’s SEIMEI telescope.

On April 5, Notsu and his colleagues got lucky: The researchers watched EK Draconis erupt in a superflare, a really big one. About 30 minutes later, the team observed what appeared to be a coronal mass ejection moving away from the star’s surface. The researchers were only able to capture the first step in the life of that ejection, called the

It also may not bode well for life on Earth, they note. The team’s findings suggest that the Sun might also be capable of reaching such violent extremes. But they add that there is no need to panic since super coronal mass ejections are probably rare in our Sun, which is turning years.

Still, Notsu points out that huge mass ejections may have been much more common in the early years of the solar system. In other words, the gigantic coronal mass ejections could

“Today’s Mars atmosphere is very thin compared to Earth’s –subraya Notsu-. In the past, we believe that Mars had a much thicker atmosphere. Coronal mass ejections can help us understand what happened to the planet over billions of years. “

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